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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22380082">Order of Operations</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/parallelmonsoon/pseuds/parallelmonsoon'>parallelmonsoon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sanders Sides (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Patton's the baby, child development, musings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 15:54:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>834</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22380082</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/parallelmonsoon/pseuds/parallelmonsoon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It would be easy to assume that Patton was the oldest.  But consider...empathy takes time to develop.  So do logic and creativity.  Anxiety, though?  Anxiety was there from the very first cry  </p>
<p>(Just a little sorta-drabble on the idea that Anxiety is actually the oldest side.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>145</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Order of Operations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It would be natural to assume that Patton was the eldest.</p>
<p>Happy Pappy. The father, eager to claim Thomas as his own. Morality, a guiding force.</p>
<p>But morality is something learned. Something one grows into. Young children can be cruel. All unknowing, stomping on ants and yanking puppy tails. Throwing tantrums over misshapen waffles while their exhausted mother weeps into the batter. By two most children are only just starting to understand that other people are *people*. With feelings that can be hurt, feelings just as real as the toddler's own. Empathy is gradual. A selfish child isn't a bad child...they simply *are* a child.</p>
<p>Morality was the *youngest.* It's a long, hard road, separating your values from the ones given to you. Children view the world as black and white, right and wrong.</p>
<p>It's wrong to kill, to lie, to steal.</p>
<p>...except in self defense. Except to protect yourself in a society that might hate you for loving who you do. Except to feed your family.</p>
<p>The world is complex, and that hurts, cuts deep. The knowledge that villains can be heroes, and that heroes can be petty.</p>
<p>So Logan, then. Logic. Cause and effect, consequence and reaction. A child tips a cup and watches the milk spill over. He falls and scrapes his knee, and understands pain just a little better then before.</p>
<p>And it's true that Logan was with Thomas from a very young age. Every sight, every sound...a world developing piecemeal, a jigsaw of astonishing complexity for Logic to fit together in his slow, methodical way.</p>
<p>He didn't always get it right. A corner piece connected to a middle, and Thomas went six months thinking that the sun winked out to become the moon. Thomas learned by mistakes, by assumptions and impulse and endless rounds of 'why why why?'</p>
<p>The frontal lobe does not reach full maturity until the late twenties. Knowledge came easily to Logan; wisdom less so. It is one thing to understand that a rickety handmade bicycle ramp may lead to a crash and something worse then a scrape. Another to make that maybe-future hold as much weight as the thrill of experimentation and rush of air in the definite-now.</p>
<p>Or consider Roman. Creativity, so fundamental to Thomas. Part of his very core, central to the man he would become. His teachers remarked on it, his parents marveled. A childhood of blanket capes and finger paints, of school plays and carefully crafted tales of fratricide. He was lucky enough to have a family who nurtured that sparkling flame of imagination, and Creativity grew up hearty and hale.</p>
<p>But it was Virgil who was there from the very start. From that very first cry. A sudden rush. Lights and noise and confusion, and there he was, crying right alongside Thomas. Terrified and so terribly, terribly....</p>
<p>Alone.</p>
<p>He grew up fast. Grew up savage, because it was all his, this burden, this responsibility. This precious, precious thing.</p>
<p>Thomas. So small, so vulnerable, and if Virgil went wrong along the way, it was only because he wanted so badly to get it <span>*right*</span>. This little life, and the world was ever so big.</p>
<p>A child wakes alone. He doesn't understand that his mother nipped down for a bathroom break. That his father is just down the hall. He doesn't even understand what there is to be afraid *of*. He only knows that he *<span>is</span>* afraid.</p>
<p>Virgil was there with him, in the dark of the nursery. There to watch the shadows shift on the walls, to hear the creak of tree branches outside the window and the rattle of the radiator. He was *always* there. He grew up fast and he grew up wary, because who else was going to protect them both?</p>
<p>He was there when the others were born. Springing forth from the weft and ether of Thomas' mind one by one by one. So small and new and so excited, ready to care and create and explore.</p>
<p>You can't keep your children safe forever...but oh, how Virgil tried! And his nagging, his threats and his bribes and his desperation, only served to drive them out into that big, dangerous world. He grew up fast and he grew up *mean.* Because he had to. Because he was the oldest, and they were his very own.</p>
<p>They forgot, as they grew older. Forgot that Virgil had been the one to dry their tears and kiss away their hurts. Remembered only his snarls and the 'no's' that poured from his lips like rain. No, you can't do that. Or that. Or this. And most certainly never *that*, are you crazy?</p>
<p>He grew up fast and he watched them drift away from him. These precious, precious things that were his burden and his joy and his despair. And where another Anxiety may have grown weak as the others grew strong, *this* Anxiety only grew stronger. Strong enough to protect them all...</p>
<p>...even if they hated him for it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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